Hey everyone, and welcome to another bit of WoW History! Every week, we look down at important events that happened in WoW (or Blizzard!) for that week.

Have you guys enjoyed this year's Blizzcon? A lot of the topics here were announced at Blizzcon of past years, after they were moved to November of every year. Let's dig in deep!

2016

November 9th, 2016 - Trial of Valor opensOn this day, Trial of Valor opened! The second Legion raid, Trial of Valor served as a stepping stone between Emerald Nightmare and Nighthold, and wrapped up Helya's storyline in Stormheim. As with almost all raids, Normal and Heroic difficulties were open on this day, while Mythic would open next week.

2015

With Legion being announced 3 months prior during the Gamescom 2015, Blizzard finally released more details during Blizzcon. Highlights of their Legion panel included:

Demon Hunters would work closely with Illidan, starting in Mardum then escaping from the Vault of the Wardens.

A small explanation of Broken Isles zones: Val'sharah being druidic themed, Trommheim focuses on Vrykuls, Azsuna is a ravaged Elven zone, Alta Montanha is a earthy, Tauren-zone, and Suramar is destroyed land with it's capital kept intact through magic.

Levelling is scaled: Zones can be approached at any level and they will level up with you, while Suramar is a 110-only zone. This allows players to pick their path and choose what zone they like best to level first.

On this day, Blizzard started releasing a series of blogs previewing the upcoming class changes in Legion. These would include the fantasy direction all specs from a said class would go through, some new abilities and a preview of their artifact weapon. These started on this day and would go till the 12th, with all 11 classes being explained in detail (since Demon Hunters weren't released yet, they didn't get these blogs).

2013

On Blizzcon 2013, two huge announcements happened: Heroes of the Storm and Warlords of Draenor!

Heroes of the Storm

Formerly known as Blizzard All-Stars, Heroes of the Storm is Blizzard's take on the MOBA genre, by using popular characters from the Blizzard franchises as heroes.

Battlegrounds and many characters should innovate the world of MOBAs. The example used by them was Abathur, the zerg evolution master from Starcraft 2: Abathur is a very frail character and incapable of fighting by himself, his power residing in his evolution abilities. He can control the battleground via usage of mines and infest allied heroes, giving them shields and having it's symbiote attack foes.

Maps have very defined objectives and different aesthetics, each objective being a means to help achieve victory.Three maps were talked about to demonstrate how objectives differ between each map:

Blackheart's Bay is a naval map where you have to collect doubloons and give them to Captain Blackheart; enough doubloons and he will shoot his cannons into the enemies' structures.

Haunted Mines is a undead-themed map with a mine full of enemies that drop skulls - after collecting skulls, a golem appears for each team. How strong the golem is, is dependant on how many skulls your team has collected.

Dragon Shire has 2 obelisks and an altar: Your team needs to control the 2 obelisks at the same time to be able to activate the altar. Using the altar transforms one of your teammates into the Dragon Knight, a very strong unit able to easily destroy buildings.

Warlords of Draenor begins as Garrosh Hellscream escapes his trial in Pandaria, after the events from Cerco a Orgrimmar. He hates both the Alliance and the Horde, so he makes friends with a bronze dragon (Kairoz), and they both reach a mutual agreement by bringing Garrosh into the past, 35 years prior. Garrosh intends to redeem the Orcs and purify the Horde as a whole, by stopping them from drinking the blood of Mannoroth.

By going back in time, players will explore Draenor before it's destruction by the hands of Ner'zhul, and encounter locations such as Frostfire Ridge, the home of the Frostwolf Clan, and Shadowmoon Valley, where the Temple of Karabor (you might know that nowadays as the Templo Negro) stands.

One of it's new features is the Garrison, WoW's answer to player housing. Garrisons grow with you and can be customized to your liking.

The 10v25 debate is finally over, as a new raid difficulty is added: Mythic. Mythic is the most difficult raid mode and will be locked to 20 players. Easier modes such as Heroic, Normal and LFR will have Flex technology implemented, so you can run those with 10 to 30 players.

2011

November 6th, 2011

The Ilha de Negraluna hit the PTR! A massive revamp to the Feira de Negraluna, this island is accessible on the first week of every month, with portals on their old locations in Elwynn Forest and Mulgore. With the implemention of the Darkmoon Island, the event was also massively expanded, including:

Rewards for tickets such as pets, mounts, and Tier 0 and 0.5 transmog replicas without class restrictions.

A large-scale free-for-all arena every 3 hours, similar to the Gurubashi Arena in Cabo do Espinhaço.

Monthly profession quests that award skill-ups, a great way to give a boost to your professions that might be behind.

2004

November 9th, 2004

One of the last stages of WoW development started on this day, with the open beta! After receiving hundreds of thousands of sign-ups, Blizzard was forced to close them and release the beta for everyone who did sign in. Together with the open beta, features like racial abilities and the Kodo mounts were released.

Together with the opening of the open beta, Blizzard issued a press release with WoW's launch data: November 23rd, 2004. WoW is already so old, isn't it?

Comentários

Comentado por Rayanist

I feel like such a geezer now. Thanks for reminding me the original launch date

Comentado por Arithawn

on 2017-11-08T16:59:00-06:00

I feel like such a geezer now. Thanks for reminding me the original launch date

I thought the same thing after reading that. :-(

The end is near....for us not the game.

Comentado por Necropos

on 2017-11-08T17:09:58-06:00

/sigh, oh WoD... How amazing you could have been... I still remember how excited I was when that expansion was announced. And I can't even remember what the old Darkmoon Faire was like! I've been playing since '06 so I'm sure I experienced the old version, but I honestly can't remember it not being an island.

Love these articles!

Comentado por Jezziut

on 2017-11-08T17:10:13-06:00

That Warlords feature highlight reminds me how excited I was for WoD. The concept and features were great just so poorly implemented.

Comentado por disk95

on 2017-11-08T17:34:07-06:00

I will miss Legion soo much ;( ! Yea Titanforged and Legendaries were bad xD but in the end, almost every aspect of the Legion was great 10/10 without a doubt and I will miss the most artifact weapons and abilities yea they will add some in next expansion as talent, but we must say good bay to Legion (well not yet until next year hehe).

Comentado por Eighjan

on 2017-11-08T18:00:56-06:00

And I can't even remember what the old Darkmoon Faire was like! I've been playing since '06 so I'm sure I experienced the old version, but I honestly can't remember it not being an island.

It actually took place in - and switched between - Goldshire & at the foot of Thunder Bluff, on a two monthly cycle (and other locations, but not 100% what they were)... pretty much all that was there was a few stalls & a series of profession-based hand-ins, but it was nothing like the version we have today.

Comentado por Soupguy

on 2017-11-08T18:25:21-06:00

I was still playing DAoC and Asheron's Call at WoW launch. My best friend started playing when the game went live and asked me if I wanted to play too. I was really put off by the cartoon like avatars and didnt think I would enjoy it at all. Flash forward to 2017 - Im here and I still cant get enough.

Comentado por Stormeey

on 2017-11-08T18:47:57-06:00

yeah i remember having to look up where DMF was going to be at. It was NOTHING like it is now. Just a few measly stalls. Most important thing being to turn in DMF Decks for rep and for trinkets because you could only do that there once a month.

Comentado por Nynaeve

on 2017-11-08T22:07:27-06:00

Overwatch was created used assets from their cancelled "secret project", Titan. Those were very different games, they wanted Overwatch to be all about the heroes and used the assets from there.

As per the Overwatch Archives Panel at Blizzcon this year, this is apparently not entirely correct. They say they used ideas and concepts from Titan, but made 100% new art assets for Overwatch.The Overwatch engine came from the ashes of the Titan engine's coding, but they deleted a majority.

Comentado por ladynagini

on 2017-11-09T02:43:19-06:00

oh man. "Blizzards' answer to player housing".... Garrisons fell so short of even touching on this. "Fully customizable", in my opinion, doesn't mean "choose from 5ish building options in a single building style regardless of race". Nothing fit my bloodelves better than a bone and hide tent in a frozen wasteland /sarcasm. I still really want a feature like having a home. Class halls are nice and all, and they avoid the issue of being isolated in one place as now you can at least see your class mates, but honestly. How hard could it be just to pull a bunch of houses from the game, put them on a little instance island and let the player decide where to put a bed and what color shield to put on a wall? Most of these art assets are readily available.

Comentado por RaindanceEU

on 2017-11-09T04:26:19-06:00

These posts remind me of a documentary we have here, where they explained events that happened "on this day, 20 years ago" etc.

Comentado por Revenor

on 2017-11-09T05:59:56-06:00

You had to remind us of WoD...

Comentado por Evilblades

on 2017-11-09T15:27:39-06:00

Wow! been playing for 13 years! Time flies when you are having fun.... My best experience was WoLK for sure - when rogues were kings of dps thanks to arpen stacking.Thanks to Blizz for continually changing, and sometimes improving, the games experience; they must have done something right to keep us playing for 13 years.

Comentado por notoriousblaze

on 2017-11-09T16:23:34-06:00

oh man. "Blizzards' answer to player housing".... Garrisons fell so short of even touching on this. "Fully customizable", in my opinion, doesn't mean "choose from 5ish building options in a single building style regardless of race". Nothing fit my bloodelves better than a bone and hide tent in a frozen wasteland /sarcasm. I still really want a feature like having a home. Class halls are nice and all, and they avoid the issue of being isolated in one place as now you can at least see your class mates, but honestly. How hard could it be just to pull a bunch of houses from the game, put them on a little instance island and let the player decide where to put a bed and what color shield to put on a wall? Most of these art assets are readily available.

Most people I know wanted player housing, retracted after garrisons. Not because of style but because how dead the world got after them. Everyone hung out in there garrison some hang out in order halls. So with the test for player housing being garrisons and order halls do you really think it would be a great idea? Also the system is limited because of how old the game is.